IBM says it wants to invest billions to develop new chip technologies.

But if Big Blue wants to manufacture those next-gen chips, the company won't have to look far to find the talent.

That is the consensus of analysts and former IBM technologists about the talent pool at IBM's East Fishkill plant, where the company continues to make chips using existing silicon-based technologies.

"We have the labor force," said Richard Doherty, research director at Long Island-based Envisioneering Group. "They are wearing IBM badges now."

On Wednesday, the company said it will invest $3 billion over the next five years into research and development of smaller and faster chips, as well as into alternative technologies for post-silicon chips.

The strategy is being driven by the higher demands of cloud computing and big-data analytics, as well as the physical limits of existing silicon-based technology.

The research and development work will be made up of scientists from Albany and Yorktown, as well as California and Europe, IBM said.

The announcement did not presage what will happen to the manufacturing facilities at East Fishkill and Essex Junction, Vermont. Both have been rumored to be for sale.

"To me, it's encouraging that they are putting in a large investment (for hardware)," said Keith Milkove, a former IBM scientist at the East Fishkill plant. "But it says absolutely zero, as far as I can tell, about East Fishkill's future."

Analysts and former IBMers familiar with East Fishkill's operations said that while they have no insight into IBM's business strategy, they believe the workforce at East Fishkill is capable of producing the new technologies.

During an interview on CNBC Thursday, IBM Senior Vice President John Kelly held up a prototype of the new chip technologies.

"I don't know anybody else on the planet that could do that — and that chip didn't just appear somewhere," Doherty said. "It came out of East Fishkill's lab section."

But East Fishkill may not be equipped to take on a larger volume of the new chips.

"East Fishkill is a pretty old manufacturing site," said Sudipta Ray, a retired senior development engineer who worked at the Wiccopee-based plant.

Ray noted that most of the research and development is taking place at the State University of New York College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, better known as Albany NanoTech.

"That tells you we may have the brains in East Fishkill," Ray said, "but we don't have the equipment and advance technology to do the work — even the development work."

Indeed, some former IBMers have worried that because East Fishkill was not mentioned in Wednesday's announcement, it may be headed for sale. GlobalFoundries, which has a manufacturing plant in Saratoga County, has been mentioned as the most likely suitor.

But few expect the factory will be shut down and the workforce to be displaced.

"On the East Coast, there is basically nowhere else where that experience pool is in place right now," said Roger Kay, an analyst with Endpoint Technologies Associates Inc.

Kay said he does not expect IBM's manufacturing plants will be sold to a single owner, but rather spun into a consortium.

"A new company could be formed, in which IBM would retain some ownership and GlobalFoundries might participate, along with some other participants," Kay said.

One such venture was formed in Singapore in 1991, according to Rob Lineback, senior market research analyst at IC Insights Inc. in Scottsdale, Arizona.

TECH Semiconductor, a wafer fab that made 8-inch DRAM memory, was formed by Texas Instruments, Hewlett-Packard, Canon and the Economic Development Board of Singapore.

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INSIDE

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IBM

Formed: In 1911, three smaller entities merged. It's initially known as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording-Company before being renamed IBM in 1924.

Employees: 431,212 worldwide.

Headquarters: Executive offices are in Armonk, New York.

Revenue: $99.7 billion in 2013. Of that, 26 percent was from software, 57 percent from services and 17 percent from hardware.

Net income: $16.4 billion in 2013.

Total assets: $126.2 billion in 2013.

Impact: The company says 90 percent of the top 60 banks use IBM products to run their IT systems, 90 percent of global credit card transactions are processed on IBM mainframes, 80 percent of all worldwide airline reservations are processed on IBM hardware and software, 23 of the top 25 U.S. retailers run their businesses on IBM mainframes.

IBM EAST FISHKILL

• The IBM East Fishkill plant has been integral in the company's semiconductor business for more than 50 years.